.ICEauthority error - don't see a fix in forums

[uncle]

Hi. I've been running LMDE on an AMD box for about a month. Presently typing this from another Mint11 (not debian) laptop. I was a member of this forum a year or two ago and probably posted 2 or 5 times, but I can't find the login so rejoined with another name. Sorry about that.

Today when turning on after a power failure yesterday, the gnome GUI failed to load. Error with writing to .ICEauthority is the message. I could get into command line via recovery console. I recalled this from a few years back when I ran Xandros (hadn't seen it since), but the measures from then don't work. I was able to rename the file to ----.old, but no joy. Same error repeated. I looked through the Mint forums rather extensively, and there is reference to this problem, but no solution, or what seemed to be misdirection to things not relevant like drivers.

I farted around with all sorts of things for about 4 hours on and off (mostly on). What I was finally able to do was create this folder: /var/lib/gdm, and make it writeable to me as user. Then I could get a gnome GUI. The .ICEauthority message is repeated. There is an additional message about usr/lib/libconf2-2/gconf-sanity-check-2 which is also mentioned within these forums and elsewhere. The mint menu appears screwed. It shows up looking normal, but doesn't respond to clicks. There is no mintmenu button now.

Notes: no updates to this system for a couple of weeks. Normal power on/off did not create trouble. Nice and fast distro for this machine with all working out of the box (camera, dvd, sounds, scanner, printers, virtualbox etc). The only thing that did this was a power failure.

I'll continue to mess around with it, probably will either fix or break further. I'm hoping someone will have a tip or direction. I think most people know how it is: you're not married to the system, but you've played daily for a month and got to liking what you'd adapted to your preferences. And then the system decided to stop playing nicely and you're trying to patch it up before starting again. I'd rather fix than restart. Makes me consider possible moving away from this version if it is not simply fixed up. Thanks in advance!

[uncle]

I waited a few days to see if anyone would know of a fix. The problem is noted elsewhere in these forums. I guess this is the status of a 'bug'.

Examples:
http://raywoodcockslatest.blogspot.com/2010/10/ubuntu-1010-error-could-not-update.html
http://www.absolutelytech.com/2010/01/27/solved-unable-to-update-iceauthority-on-booting/
including a Mint one:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=78144&p=454567&hilit=.ICEauthority#p454567

There are many others. These are all success stories. The problem is that with Linux Mint Debian Edition, the fixes of changing ownerships and permissions do not work.
Like this:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=76171&p=442884&hilit=.ICEauthority#p442884

I can't change permissions or change ownership of user files as admin/superuser. Can't run some programs as user. The problem seems to be the ICEauthority permissions changes other permissions and essentially trashes the permissions structure. Give that the fix is supposed be to change permissions and ownership and the deployment of debian within Linux Mint doesn't allow this, then it is a screwed up circular problem, that evidently - given no responses to the initial post - is not fixable. Probably because most people see to run laptops these days, a power failure produced error is not so common.

Solution here can only be to recommend that no-one run LMDE on a desktop without power failure back-up power, and probably run some other debian based distro until this is addressed.